1. How do you feel
knowing that two fics were inspired by "April Is the Cruelest Month" ("To
Mother You," by Parker-man, and "Night Holds the Key," by Anachronism Girl)?

I was pretty
darn happy about it, especially because I liked both stories (thank you
again!). If anyone wants to write a sequel or prequel or whatnot to a fanfic
I've done, that's great. The more, the merrier!

2. How many different
ways did you come up with to almost kill Jane before you settled on the car
wreck?

To be honest,
as the story developed, Jane was always going to have that hear-fatal
hit-and-run. One of the habits I have when writing about a specific character
is to look for one of that character's primary strengths, some essential part
of the character's identity in the "Daria" show, then destroy that element in
as brutal a manner as possible, to find out how the character copes with the
disaster and see if the character grows beyond it. Often I have no idea when I
start writing how a story will turn out, and "April" was one of those
we'll-see-how-it-comes-out-when-it's-over tales, so I didn't initially know if
Daria and Jane would survive or be crushed out. Jane was known for two things:
being an artist, and being a runner. I took away her running ability, but left
her still pure Jane. (I was glad to see recently that Glenn Eichler agreed with
me that Jane was such a sexual creature! But, then, we all knew that, didn't
we?)

This story
originally took shape in my head as one episode of a much longer (still
unpublished) tale called "Bipolar II," which I was working on as late as
October 2002. Descriptions of "Bipolar II" appear in the author's notes for
"April Is the Cruelest Month" and in the notes for several other tales also
derived from the seminal work ("The Omega Jane," "Where No Light Breaks, Where
No Sea Runs," and Part Three of "Smoking Mirror"). The more-or-less final
version of "April" came out in November 2002 after beta-reading.

I should point
out that one beta-reader had a profound impact on the story. In the original
version of "April," Daria was also going blind from glaucoma (I was learning
about the disease in one of my graduate-school classes at the time-I was
getting my master's degree in psychology). Ruthless Bunny said the glaucoma
part was a little much, so I scrubbed it. Giving Daria post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) was enough. Ruthless Bunny also recommended adding a scene in
which Jane goes hunting for guys, and the scene in the souvenir shop was born.
Thank you, Ruthless Bunny! And Daria thanks you, too, for not letting her go
blind. I'll have to use the glaucoma thing later on someone else.

3. How far into the
story was it before you decided to give Daria the flashbacks?

The
flashbacks were fated to be there from the start. Not once in the story is
Daria's problem called PTSD, but that's what it really is. I decided not to
mention the diagnosis and instead just show how it manifested. When I was a
mental health counselor in the Army in the late 1970s (at Womack Army Hospital,
Fort Bragg, N.C.), I had worked with Vietnam veterans who suffered from PTSD,
and I had a fair idea of how it appeared. Graduate-school courses filled in the
details.

I had meant for the
accident to have two totally different effects on the friends. Jane would
suffer physically but have no memory of the event. Daria would have no physical
trauma, but her memory of the event is crippling her. Jane is on the upswing in
the story, saved from despair by Daria, but Daria is heading downhill fast and
must be saved by someone quickly before she is overcome. Heights, depths, and
falling are major themes in the story, and in a way it mirrored the larger
scheme I'd planned for "Bipolar II," which was a series of interconnected
vignettes following an up-and-down pattern in mood (the overall level of which
descended over time into horror and chaos) that mirrored the actual course of
the illness called bipolar disorder, type II. The original form of
"April" appeared early in "Bipolar II" and was meant to be
one of the optimistic peaks.

4. You're probably as
well known for your alternate-universe fics as you are for your angst-based
works. How did you get interested in such radical, off-canon "Daria" fics?

Though I
wasn't completely aware of it, I have always tended to write angsty stories.
Many of the fantasy fiction tales I wrote for Dragonlance and other
AD&D-game-inspired anthologies are pretty much hard-core angst (e.g., "The
Goblin's Wish" in The Reign of Istar, "Vision" in Realms of Infamy, or "Sea of Ghosts" in Realms of
the Underdark). Anyone
who has read them can offer an opinion here of their angstiness, pro or con. I
never actually thought of them as "angst" stories when I wrote them; they were
simply the kind of stories I liked to write.

Suffering has
intrigued me for a long time; I used to read things like C. S. Lewis's The
Problem of Pain or
John Hershey's Hiroshima, trying to puzzle out why some people came through disasters and
grew anew, while so many others failed. I was also intrigued by positive (and
negative) transformations in character and morality brought on by extremes of
stress. When I was in high school, my favorite novels were about atomic-war
survival (a bunch are listed in the author's notes to "Gone"), and when I
discovered Stephen King, I was knocked out.

When I fell
into "Daria" fanfic in early 2002, I became a big fan of Renfield's work, of
which I thought, That shocked the hell out of me! Wow! I want to write just
like he does! I got
into Kara Wild's Driven Wild Universe and got caught up in the woes and
stresses of the cast's everyday lives, the strengths and flaws of character
that changed individuals as they struggled through their challenging days. Much
of the fanfic writing of these two authors is also in the AU field, so . . .
there it was. Later I discovered Brother Grimace, Angelinhel, and other
nightmare creators that regularly cause me to bow down and cry, "I'm not
worthy! I'm not worthy!" It was synergy, I guess, or mental illness. Whatever.

Alternate-universe
fanfic also allowed for character growth and plot developments not normally
seen in either reality or the "Daria" show. I was a fan of alternate-universe
SF for years before discovering "Daria" fandom, going to seminars on AU writing
and collecting a fair amount of AU-SF of all sorts, though I admit I never got
into Harry Turtledove's work as many people have. I once wrote an
alternate-universe fantasy story based on the Dragonlance saga ("There Is
Another Shore, You Know, Upon the Other Side," from The Dragons of Chaos); the editors told me they would never
take an AU DL story for their anthology, but they did, and I was insufferably
proud of myself for weeks. In 1986, I did an AU Marvel Super Heroes adventures,
too (The Gates of What If?) that has become a collector's item in some places. It sort of
figured that "Daria" would get the AU treatment. There's just so much that you
can do with AU tales, though I do try to build as much as possible of each tale
on canon sources.

Note: I am working on
the sequel to "Gone," in which Daria makes her appearance 35 years after World
War III. This will justify the existence of "Gone" and give it a purpose, which
a lot of people have wondered about since the story appeared. Sorry about that.
Also working on the next PitA tale. Sorry for the delay.

5. What is the one fic
that you wish that you hadn't written, or that you wish you could rewrite in a
major fashion?

"Bus Stop." It
was based on the idea that "Daria" and the movie Ghost World were related, but they're not, damn
it. It was a dumb idea anyway. I've decided to just ignore that story and move
on.

I was very
worried for a time about the release of "Where No Light Breaks, Where No Sea
Runs," because at the time I was a substitute teacher and had qualms about
doing an online story about a school shooting. Before then, I was just plain
worried. I finally changed my online handle from my real name to The Angst Guy,
and that solved things, I think. I like that story a lot better than I like "Bus
Stop." Judging from the e-mails I got, I think most readers rate that WNLBWNSR
as the most out-of-character tale I ever did, though I tend to dispute that.

Several (a lot
of) people had major issues with the Outers Trilogy (as noted at the end of
"But Now Is Found"), and I wish I had taken the second book in a different
direction, letting Daria be friends with Elsie Sloane (the new "Jane") and meet
other canon characters about her age-without the aliens. I might yet do it.
Other people have paradoxically asked me to finish the trilogy's third book
("Was Blind But Now Can See"). So . . . I dunno what to do. We'll see.

Some criticism
came in about the ending of "When the Torrent of That Time Comes Pouring Back,"
the sequel to "Nine Point Oh," regarding Sandi's last mission. Though I've
seriously considered toning it down, I've left it as it is because it made more
sense in the context of the story for Sandi to make the preparations she does,
even if her mission risks doom on multiple levels. She's been through too much
to stop at anything less, and it brings the story back to its beginning as
nothing else could. It just has to happen.

6. Why a ski trip for
spring break?

My wife is
fond of ski resorts in Colorado like Breckenridge and Keystone. In the mid-1990s,
we took some trips to those places, and I learned that skiing was dangerous to
my continued existence-but ski lodge life is pretty good if you get hot cocoa
and stand at the bottom of the slopes, taking pictures of your family coming
down all cold and wet and shivering.

As I was thinking about
the story, it came to me that the most impractical place for a person on
crutches to go was a ski resort, but it also made sense because the lodge's
party life is a major reason for going there. It has been said to me that young
women often flock to ski resorts hoping to meet guys and go partying, but the
lodges are jammed with families and teenage geeks, and suitable party guys are
lacking. Alas. Perfect place for Jane and Daria to visit, though. I used details
from both resorts to create Snowcastle, and my memory of driving to and from
Breckenridge (and Denver's airport) to do the scenery.

7. What are some of the
qualities in your writing that have evolved over the course of writing "Daria"
fiction, and what qualities have come about as a result of the responses of the
Daria fan community?

Writing alone
isn't enough to make me a better writer (assuming that my writing has improved
at all). If not for fanfic readers' feedback, my stuff wouldn't get anywhere-and
I wouldn't be writing, either. I rarely got feedback when I wrote Dragonlance
or other fiction, except from the editors. I had no idea if anyone ever liked
what I did. Writing fanfiction has been incredible because people all over the
world can write to me and give me feedback almost instantly about anything I
do. I love it!

The only trick
to giving critical feedback is to be honest. Positive feedback is valuable
because it gives the writer motivation. Negative feedback makes the writer
rethink things and try again. Most writers secretly think their work is crap,
even if they like what they do. You need good strokes somewhere down the line
to keep from throwing away your computer and printer and calling it quits.

The thing that
readers harp about most to me is keeping the fanfic characters true to the
versions that appeared on "Daria." Even if the story is way off the beaten
track-AU, SF, fantasy, horror, crossover, future, past, whatever-the characters
must look as much as possible like the versions in the actual episodes. I am
willing to revise my characters' looks, deeds, words, and thoughts to more
closely match the show versions, unless there is good reason in the story not
to do so.

The feedback
that hits me hardest is usually about the endings of my stories. At times it
seems everything else comes out right but the finale ("Gone," "Darius,"
"Drive," etc.), and it's a real struggle to figure out how to make things
right. It is painful to admit when a reader's criticisms seem to be on target,
but articulate and perceptive readers can cause you real agony. If you think
they're right, you have to buckle down and redo everything to make the work
shine.

Many people
had issues with the original ending of "Gone," so I redid it-and it's still not
right. It won't be right until part two (Daria after WW3) is dragged out,
showing why Helen's suffering made any difference to the altered world of the
show. The end of "Darius" was rewritten, and it seemed to work much better than
the first time. "Drive" needs an extra chapter before the last one. "Forgotten
But Not Gone" needs the last chapter split and some loose ends touched up. The
first ending I tagged on to "Fortunate One" was hated by most readers, but I
played with the story and did a much better ending more in tune with the
story's sensibilities. A surprise that appeared at the end of the PitA tale,
"Shock and Aww," was moved to the next story, "Family Affairs," based on
beta-reader feedback. And I've already talked about the Outers Trilogy. [sigh]

The one thing I harp
about most to myself is revising a published story to remove errors and improve
its appearance. Because of the medium our fandom uses-an online, real-time,
shared computer network-I can keep reshaping stories over time, sending revised
versions to websites to replace older ones, until the tales look exactly like I
want them, if I think I didn't get it right the first time. I can be very picky
about that, but I haven't been so bad about it lately, so webmasters don't hate
me as much as they used to. I think.

8. When writing this
story, were you drawing on personal experience about people's reaction to Jane
or were you basing it off of an educated guess on humanity as a whole?

First- and
second-hand personal experience, I'm afraid. People can be incredible assholes
and say the most thoughtless things, or they can be helpful and respectful
(sometimes) to others. When I was single, I once walked over to an attractive
woman at a volleyball party and asked what she did for a living. "Work with 'tards,"
she said. "What?" I said. "Retards," she clarified. "Oh," I said, and left
right away. And there was the minister who sat with my church youth group when
I was a teenager and told jokes about black people, using the N-word. And I
read the news all the time, so I know about the teens who sodomized the
mentally handicapped girl in this school, and the man who shot his estranged
wife and children to death in that city, and so on. People can really suck
without half trying. Sometimes they don't mean to come off as disrespectful
wicked scum, but they do anyway and even feel justified about it. I've been a
jerk at times, too, so I should know.

Regarding dating, my
wife used to run a singles' dating service in a major Midwestern city. She
collected books on bad dating habits and bad dating attitudes, and she has a
raft of dating horror stories that would cause your eyeballs to melt. Jane's
fictional dating experiences as a handicapped single, I am inclined to think,
are not unusual for someone in that same position in the real world. People
either ignore you or treat you weird or are just plain mean to you. If anyone
can offer evidence proving me wrong, please do.

9. With your fics, you
became the standard-bearer for two movements in Daria fanfiction: angst-driven
fics (hence your name) and AU-based stories. What have been your experiences in
the response to your works from the fandom?

I don't think
of myself as a standard-bearer for these movements, as plenty of people did
them very well before I came along, and plenty do them now. As far as reader
reaction, people either like angst fics and AU fics, or they hate them. It is
rare to get anyone to "convert" to liking those stories if they didn't before;
it's like getting someone who likes historical romances to like slasher horror
or technothrillers. Readers aren't shy about telling me what sucks about a
given story. The themes that have received the most objections from readers,
while also getting strong votes of approval from other readers, are: any story
with gay/lesbian elements (e.g., the Pause in the Air series, which some
readers feel is out of character and inappropriate); any AU/SF/crossover story
(in favor of mainline Dariaverse tales from the Lawndale High School years);
and, any angst story (in favor of comedies).

Regarding the
latter, I've noticed I never get as much response from readers on the comedy
fanfics as I do with the angst stories, the latter of which can really fill my
e-mailbox. Everyone who writes comedy says it is much harder to do than
tragedy, which I think is true, plus there is enormous individual variation in
what people specifically want in their comedies. I like slapstick ("The Thong
Remains the Same," "Luuuv Story," "Memory Lame," "Nuthouse," "I Never
Metamorphosis I Didn't Like," "Turn Down the Sun") and find it hard to write
more realistic comedy ("Highland Fling," "See Jane Spike," "Home on Deranged"
(borderline slapstick), "Quinnisqatsi"). Few of these get anywhere near the
level of feedback that a story like "Nine Point Oh" will get, though
"Metamorphosis" and "See Jane Spike" have some dedicated fans.

Some stories,
almost always the angsty ones (AU or not), get very intense responses from
readers. A pile of e-mail about "Nine-Eleven and Counting" came in from people
who were affected by the 9/11 attacks, almost all the commentary being
favorable though at the same time recalling very disturbing events from that
time period. (See next question, however.) Some beta-readers for "Where No
Light Breaks, Where No Sea Runs" would have been happy to chase me around with
pitchforks and shovels, I think. (But we're all okay about that now, right
guys? Everything's cool now, right? Hello?) "True Lies" grossed out some female
readers. Some readers found they had trouble reading through hard-core angst
fics like "Smoking Mirror" (Part Three, especially), and some cried through
"Fortunate One." (I do.)

The negative reaction
to any story is almost always countered by positive reaction, so I never know
what to make of it. I usually elect to just write what I want to write, and see
what happens.

10. As we've seen in
your works, there are very few lines that you won't cross (e.g., "Drive,"
"Darius," "Gone," "The Thirteenth Man," "Where No Light Breaks, Where No Sea
Runs"). What are the lines in terms of subject matter that you won't cross, and
what are some subjects that you wish you hadn't touched on, or with you had
done it differently?

11. In fics like "Nine
Point Oh," "But in Her Heart a Cold December," "Prayers for a SAINT," "Gone,"
and "Nine-Eleven and Counting," we see you've no problem with using the hot
topics of the day and current/historical events as the basis for your works.
What topics or events have you considered for use but rejected, and why?

I put these
two questions together for the following answer because they're closely
related.

The best
advice I ever got on this topic came from Writing Mysteries: A Handbook by
the Mystery Writers of America (Sue Grafton, editor), page 12: "The mirror image of the previous
rule ["Some Violence Is Required"] is that there are some types of violence
that are not acceptable, even in fiction. The virtually taboo areas include
graphic scenes of child abuse, rape and cruelty to animals. The reason behind
this rule is common decency." I learned the truth of this when some readers of
the early version of "Nine-Eleven and Counting" became very upset that child
abuse was implied to have taken place in the Lane family (performed by "friends
of the family"), severely affecting the oldest siblings of Trent and Jane. This
part was greatly toned down in the recently revised version of the story, and
no one has complained about it since. I was a rape crisis counselor in the Army
for a brief time (1977-1978), and after a dozen cases I was pretty much burned out.
I get a pretty strong flinch reaction even reading this sort of thing, so I
don't put it in my stories, and there are some fanfic threads to which I don't
contribute.

I would also
add to the above that I'm not fond of writing out long descriptions of physical
torture. The limit I reached was probably in "Illusions," when Jane met the AU
Daria in the abandoned house near the story's end. (What happened to Jane in
"April" doesn't count.) Mental torture is quite satisfying in itself, so I will
stick with that.

Sometimes I think I'll
never write about certain subjects, but then an idea comes and I do it anyway,
like writing about the abortion conflict in "One More River to Cross" (no one
complained about that, which was weird) or home-front battles in the Drug War
in "Potential." At the moment (when I am not answering these questions) I'm
working on "Darkness," which is a serial about a near-future America in which
proponents of ultraconservative Christianity have taken control of the
government, with what I feel are predictable consequences reaching into the
lives of an adult Daria and company. I've taken pains to research the issues
and can cite references to support most bits of anticipated trouble named in
the story. I research almost every story anyway as an old habit. I read a lot
about spinal-cord injuries when writing "April," for instance.

At this point,
I need to say that I am not a radical on any particular topic except, perhaps,
moderation. (We won't go into the penguin thing or Ann Coulter here.) I'm very
much center-of-the-road in my politics and am not super-fond of abortion or
Christian bashing. I'm Jewish but used to be Christian, and I have a large
number of ardent Christians (of many flavors) in my immediate and extended
family, as well as Jews, pagans, atheists, and whatever. It's all family. As a
writer, though, I want to create stuff that is riveting and immediate, as much
as fanfic can be, without beating any religious or political drum in too
annoying or offensive a manner. I confess a major weakness of mine is that I am
deathly afraid of offending people. You can't always keep from offending
others, and sometimes you have to, but it should not be done stupidly or
unnecessarily. "Darkness" is very hard to write, partly because work and home
compete for time with it, but mainly because I want to make the nature of the
enemy very clear, and it is intolerance and bigotry and hypocrisy, not
Christianity. (To quote a Mad magazine character in its parody of The French
Connection, "I wish
all the bigots would go back to Bigotland where they came from.") Anyway, there
it is. I already have a fair idea where the story is going. I am a little
worried about what people will think of what's to come, but the story's got to
go there, so I just grit my teeth and write.

A few other
potentially offensive tales are in the works. People on PPMB will have seen
chapter one of a radical AU about Nazism in America, in the as-yet-unfinished
"Das Elendskčcken" ("The Misery Chick" in German). It's not about German-bashing
but is about the love affair certain elements of America have with Nazism's
ideals. Another is "The Alternate History Teacher," about which I should say
nothing though I discussed quite a bit of its background on PPMB at one point.
The core content is fairly disturbing to me and I am not sure how to proceed
with it, but it will pop out one day anyway. Wish me luck!

I suppose one day I
will write a Daria AU or future tale in which ultraliberal forces take over
America and ruin it, but a theme hasn't yet suggested itself. Time will tell.

12. Which do you
consider to be the most challenging to write for: canon characters, pre- or
post-canon characters, or characters of your own invention?

All of these
are about same with me, though characters of my own invention are easiest to do
because I can make them up as I go along instead of researching them. Research
can be laborious when it comes to hard-to-figure-out characters like Tom Sloane
or Andrea or Jake Morgendorffer. I research a lot before I write and while I'm
writing, often going through scripts from multiple episodes line by line (or
watching them) looking for quotes, quirks, and personal background bits.
Googling hard data is pretty common for me, looking up stuff on robot vacuums,
interstellar propulsion, sensory deprivation experiments, Jules Verne,
schizophrenia, magnolia blossoms, the 1966 Buick Wildcat, Seoul during the
Korean War, blindness, coastal damage from the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, etc.
Coming up with character stuff, though, is much harder, because you can so many
miss tiny important things. A beta-reader reminded me that Quinn Morgendorffer
doesn't drink coffee ("April Showers"), for instance, and a reader of "Nine
Point Oh" noted that Sandi Griffin knew how to swim in "Fat Like Me," though
she didn't in "Just Add Water." There's just too much to know, and watching all
the episodes is just about impossible for me. Some of the recent interviews
with Glenn Eichler have screwed up a few of my stories, most notably "Gone,"
which had Helen be older than Rita (damn it!).

13. Who are some of
your favorite works and writers, and why?

Writers (no order): I'm a complete slut when
it comes to Daria fanfic. I had a list here that pretty much covered almost all
of the writers past and present, so it was useless. I'm addicted to many of the
ongoing serials, for sure. As far as writers and works I haven't fully gotten
into, but will read before long, are Dervish ("Something to Shoot For"), Napalm
Kracken ("I Was a Marvel Anti-Hero"), and Ostragoth ("Estrangesters"), plus
some on fanfiction.net I haven't even seen yet. I'm also getting into the
massive inventories of Canadabrit and Steven Galloway, which will take time.

14. How do you see your
angst-driven works differing from the other primary angst-driven writers in
Daria fandom: Renfield, Brother Grimace, and Angelinhel? How are your works
similar?

This is
difficult to answer because I've never compared what I write to what anyone
else writes. I like a well-told story, and that's about it. The works of all
three of the above writers have intrigued me. It was fun to get to borrow their
universes a tiny bit for "Illusions." I've also been unable to figure
out how my work compares with anyone else's work, at any time. I can't see my
own work as everyone else sees it. This spares me from becoming a prima donna,
a condition that--if I discovered it in me--would cause me to drop out of
fandom altogether in self-disgust. (Maybe I'm just blind to it.)

Anyway, I
could try to compare and contrast the works of the above three or other people,
but not with my own. I can't do that.

15. As one
of the few true professional writers in Daria fandom, could you tell us how you
came into writing fan fiction, and why?

How it
happened . . . that's sort of odd. The story has been told in shorter form, but
here's the long version.

I knew about
fanfic as far back as the mid-1970s (original "Star Trek" stuff) and even wrote
a couple stories about a starship with an Andorian captain. All of those tales
have fortunately been lost. My contact with fanfic continued off and on over
the years, particularly in the 1980s, when I attended SF/F fan conventions in
the Chicago/Milwaukee/Madison area for TSR, Inc., when I was on the Dragon
Magazine staff. I didn't get into any particular fandom, though I was intrigued
with some of the stuff produced, such as a mega-crossover tale about an alien
invasion being repelled by TV-show characters ranging from Dr. Who down to
"Magnum, P.I." I did write a couple of licensed Conan books and did some Marvel
Universe stuff for TSR, but that doesn't count as fanfic, I guess. Plus all the
Dragonlance stories and so on. I got paid for that, so it doesn't count. As far
as non-TSR writing, I published a poem and a short story, plus some science
magazine articles.

At the time I
was laid off from Hasbro, Inc. (which had bought out Wizards of the Coast,
which had bought out TSR, Inc.), I was a telecommuting editor who worked at
home. My family and I had moved away from Milwaukee because, to give the
shortest possible story about it (and not wishing to say more than this),
someone was stalking my family and we elected to "disappear" for a time. That
situation has been completely resolved, so for the first time I can finally
tell everyone where I really live, which is:

Louisville, Kentucky.

Yes, Derby City.
That's my home. We moved here in 1995 and have had a very low-key existence
since then. My apologies for not saying where I was before, but it just wasn't
possible. It doesn't matter now, thank heavens.

(Side note: It
will still be hard for me to visit with any other fans or have them see me,
because, in the shortest possible form again, some family members are un-fond
of my fanfic writing to a serious degree. I decided to change my online name to
The Angst Guy for this reason. Things are fine now, and life goes on.)

Anyway, my
last project from Hasbro was to edit a role-playing game version of Frank
Herbert's Dune novels, and I had just read the first three books and discovered
a whole pile of editing/writing mistakes from the series that I think I still
have somewhere, though only in the form of notes I made in the books, plus
looking over a huge half-completed manuscript giving the background for the
universe, mostly for the first book. And then, in December 2000, on the same
night the Supreme Court decided W was president, I got a phone call from my
boss, who said I was being laid off as part of a major restructuring at Hasbro.
The company laid off hundreds of people then and in subsequent months, until
almost everyone I used to work with was let go. I had no hard feelings about
it, not even against W for deliberately causing me to lose my job, so
everything's okay with that. There are odd rumors about why Hasbro let go so
many people, mostly having to do with overinvesting in Star Wars toys that didn't
sell, plus buying WotC for the Pokemon card game, which had once sold billions
but now had leveled off in sales. Whatever.

With nothing
else to do, I decided to try writing some original novels of my own, having
published a lot of AD&D game fiction. I gamely wrote 2.5 fantasy and
science-fiction novels, managed with great difficulty to find an agent, and
proceeded to sell nothing. I wasted a year and a half by writing and writing
and writing, and there's nothing to show for it today except extreme embarrassment
and some computer files I no longer look at. I understand in hindsight that
book companies were oversupplied with manuscripts from new writers, but they
devote too few editors to reading those new manuscripts. After the end of 2001,
almost all of those manuscripts were thrown out for fear they had been
contaminated with anthrax. Things were not going well.

In the final
months of 2001, I was poking around the Internet when I entered the word
"Daria" into a search engine and discovered Planet Daria. I had heard of
"Daria" from my days at Wizards of the Coast, when the idea was being tossed
about of designing games for teenage girls that would be as popular as the
D&D games had been for boys. Someone mentioned Daria to me about 1997-1998
during a visit to Seattle, and I was intrigued with a brainy cartoon show aimed
at girls, but I didn't see it until one afternoon in St. Louis, Missouri,
visiting family. We were staying at a hotel and I turned on the cable channel
and got to watch about 20 minutes of "Dye! Dye! My Darling." I was stunned. The
show was cool! (I didn't know until later that I was going to hate this
episode.) Later, I saw about 5-10 minutes of "Murder She Snored." That, until
2002, was all the "Daria" I knew of.

Anyway, I
liked Planet Daria. It was cool. The first fanfic I read was the one about
Daria meeting the Predator. Then I discovered the Driven Wild Universe on
Outpost Daria, and it was all downhill from there. I wrote to Kara Wild about
April 2002 when I was mostly depressed over selling nothing, and if I recall
correctly I asked her something about "Daria" fandom being different after
9/11. She said no, it was about the same. I was really glad to hear from
someone in the fandom itself (her response to me was the pivotal event that decided
that I would stick around), and shortly after that I also heard from Kemical
Reaxion after writing something to her, too. And then I decided to write a
fanfic of my own, just for fun.

I have to say
that at the time I didn't think I was ever going to get anything sold in real
life. (I was right; I still haven't.) I was midway through a modern-horror
novel called "Unreal Estate," about a lady realtor who discovered she had a
knack for selling stigmatized (genuinely haunted) property but couldn't figure
out why she was so good at it. (I might cannibalize this story for a "Daria"
story, so I won't spoil it.) Anyway, I poked around at some ideas for Daria
stories, and the first idea I had was to have Daria involved in stopping a
school shooting. I guess the angst thing was already up and running in my head
when I came into the fandom, but a lot of my Dragonlance and other game-related
fiction were already deeply into Angst Land, so it was nothing new for me.

The second
idea I had for a Daria story (script) was "Nine-Eleven and Counting," which I
began serializing near the end of April 2002 on fanfiction.net. The story was
sort of self-therapy for me, as I almost lost several family members on 9/11,
and I was very depressed. I soon switched over to writing the story up and
sending it to some websites, and again, it was downhill from there. I got some
good feedback from the story as well as some negative comments, but I was
hooked and kept going.

I kept writing
even through graduate school at the University of Louisville (2002-2003), where
I earned my Masters degree in psychology. Finding a job was difficult after
that, but I am gainfully employed today as a counselor for a major psychiatric
hospital in Louisville, on the unit that handles persons who cannot be
prosecuted for major felonies because of their mental state (paranoid
schizophrenia, mostly). I work with murderers, armed robbers, and your
garden-variety violent psychotics, all of them very nice people when they are
getting their medication. Really.

Writing fanfic
is my way of having a little fun just by myself. It keeps me perked up when I
need it. The feedback has been very good, no matter what sort of feedback I
get. I've commented elsewhere that I've gotten more feedback, and more GOOD
feedback, from writing Daria fanfic that for anything else I ever did put
together. I don't care that I don't get paid; it's a hobby. If I got paid, it
wouldn't be fun anymore and I would quit and find something else to do, like
researching Mercury spacecraft, which was my hobby before I began writing
fanfic. (I wrote a bibliographic paper giving all known resources on unflown
and unused Mercury spacecraft, getting help from a couple of NASA people. The
paper is now being used as an unofficial reference for the history department
of NASA. At least, that's what they said they were doing with it.)

As a side
note, late last year I left SFWA (the Science-Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
America), to which I had belonged since about 1982, because I was producing no
new fiction of the sort the group recognized. Also, there's the usual turmoil
about fanfic being "bad" with regard to copyright, etc., so I mailed in my
resignation and went my own way. No one had ever complained to me about it, but
I elected to get rid of the problem early on. SFWA is a wonderful group, and it
would be nice to one day rejoin it, but I'm basically a writing bum and may as
well act like one.

That's
basically the story of my secret Daria life. I don't advertise it to anyone I
know, so here I am, in the middle of the normal world, writing fanfic and never
once meeting anyone who is another Daria fan. Tah-dah. Wish me luck in staying
in the field and writing some non-angsty stories later this year!